It’s time to stand up to “flying rats” a.k.a Seagulls

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Letter to The Sun:

Vicious seagulls are taking over our country.  The decline of the fishing industry has left less food for these feathered menaces to scavenge from the docks, so tens of thousands of them have taken up residence in inland towns and cities. And they aren’t just poking through rubbish bins. These “flying rats”, some of which grow to a huge size, have been dive-bombing families, biting toddlers and attacking pets. In 2015, gulls pecked a Yorkshire terrier to death in Cornwall, and one was recently reported to have carried off a chihuahua from a woman’s garden in Devon.

As a city councillor in Worcester – which is fully 40 miles from the sea – I am inundated with frightened parishioners telling tales of aggressive birds pecking at them whenever they venture into the garden. Residents and tourists are avoiding eating in outdoor cafés, and business owners are complaining about coming to work to find their shops “blanketed in white droppings”. There’s only one answer to the gull problem: “We must kill the bloody things.” As a nation of animal lovers, we may baulk at the idea of a cull, but something must be done.  (Alan Amos,The Sun, 10 August 2019)

Years ago my wife and I visited Brighton, which is on the South coast of England.  We were sitting in the open air, harmlessly having lunch, when a huge seagull swooped down upon our table. Wings outspread, it must have been over two feet across, wingtip to wingtip.  It had a nasty, disdainful look in its eye, was totally unafraid and was armed with a fearsome beak.  It seized my egg and tomato sandwich, its contents spilling out on nearby sightseers as it fearlessly flapped away.  Moral: don’t eat outside by the seaside, or, if you do, don’t choose bacon, egg and tomato sandwiches.

P.S  This seagull crisis is clearly the fault of the EU.  Once Britain has crashed out of the EU seagulls will obviously confine their activities to France.

The British political system is bankrupt (and in good company)

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The Queen, who by tradition does not comment on politics, is quoted as saying that the political class is incapable of governing.  Amen to that.

Robert Unger, a philosopher at Harvard, says that European politicians don’t know how to do anything apart from splitting the difference, and are incapable of facing up to fundamental problems.  This leaves an opening to nationalist populists, who know even less and have nothing to offer that is constructive, but know which resentment buttons to push.

Unger wants a radical transfer of power and money to people and places far from Westminster, so that they can try their own social and economic experiments, in contrast to the current busted economic and governing model. He believes this would revivify national politics. Centralisation has been a massive failure.

At the moment the UK is in existential crisis (per Michel Barnier). The institutions, the economy and the system of representation are being shown up to be no longer fit for their tasks.   During the recent election the two main parties each took less than a quarter of all the potential votes (you wouldn’t know it listening to the business-as-usual speeches of the Prime Minister).  Old codgers continue to vote for business as usual, and, of course, Brexit, the results of which they arguably won’t live long enough to endure.

London-centric politicians starve the provinces of cash and sit on anything that smells of political imagination.  Disabled people, for instance, are apparently of no interest to the government. They are left hungry, housebound and ignored. There are few people who are capable of re-imagining what the state and the economy are for.  Instead the country is stuck in old battles over who gets what subsidies and which clique runs everything.  Nothing is forthcoming from the Labour Party, run by a man stuck firmly in the socialist mind-frame of the 1950s.  You can get by with the tired approach to governing while most people are getting richer, but after a decade of no wage growth and benefits going to the 1%, things will get even more toxic unless we clear out the two irrelevant main political parties and see what ideas the local yokels can make work. (sparked off by a Guardian article on 7 June 2019)

Followers of Epicurus are not supposed to get involved, or take a particular interest, in politics.  But we face an existential crisis, even the break-up of the “United” Kingdom.  This cannot be ignored by responsible and thoughtful people.  Devolution of power seems a sensible answer to at least some of the problems, if you can get citizens actually motivated and involved.

And now the Prime Minister wants to prorogue (i.e suspend) Parliament so that he can ram through a No-deal Brexit.  How does that distinguish him from any other run-of-the-mill petty autocrat?  And in case I am criticized for being too political, I have five grandchildren and want the peace of mind of knowing that their lives are is going to be at least as happy and secure as mine.

 

Good news, we hope: a new approach to cancer

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From The Guardian:

Scientists have opened up a new front in the war against cancer, aimed not so much at curing the disease as disarming it, so that it becomes a “manageable” condition. Just as bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics, cancers can mutate to become resistant to the drugs used to treat them, which is why when cancer metastasises (reappearing elsewhere in the body in an advanced form), it is so often fatal.

Conventional cancer treatments are based on a “shock and awe” principle of killing as many cancerous cells as possible. Researchers working at a new centre being built by the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) are focusing on developing new drugs that can be given alongside conventional treatments, and which are aimed not at killing the cancer, but at stopping its evolution into a resistant form. “What we’re really looking at here is a culture change – among cancer researchers and clinicians, and also among patients,” Professor Paul Workman, chief executive of the ICR, is quoted as saying. “We will always strive to cure cancer, but in advanced disease where that may not be possible, an evolutionary approach opens up the prospect of long- term control with a good quality of life.” 

My comment:  My father, grandfather and great-grandfather all died of cancer.  As someone who has had one serious cancer condition that involved surgery, and a second threatened one that was caught in time before it developed, I share with millions of others the fear experienced when the doctor talks about the subject.   If some of that fear is eliminated this will be good news for scores of patients.

Drug deaths in the US and some unintended consequences. No. 2

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Well-intentioned policies can have unintended consequences. For example, while the rate of new opioid prescriptions has fallen in recent years, a large number of physicians have stopped initiating opioids altogether.  While that may sound like a good thing, it’s not clear whether this does more good or harm to patients in severe pain.

This isn’t the first time the rate of opioid deaths has slowed for a year. They appeared to stall in 2011 and 2012, but the death rate then shot back up as fentanyl made its way into the US.  Fentanyl deaths in 2018 continued to rise, but grew at a slower rate than the past several years. So, it’s right to be only cautiously optimistic when it comes to a possible break in the wave of opioid-related deaths.(The new numbers are still being finalised, and may increase when the final CDC report is published later this year. They also do not include deaths related to infection from intravenous drug use.)

Furthermore, renewed attempts to overturn President Obama’s Affordable Care Act are currently underway. Should these succeed, many people who currently receive legal pain relief may end up turning to illegal drugs if they lose their health insurance. Celebrating the end of the opioid epidemic is premature. (An edited version by Chelsea Whyte in the New Scientist , Aug 2019).

In our local pharmacy they informally stopped dispensing opioids months ago and tell you to go elsewhere, even if you have a legitimate prescription, written to deal with pain after an operation.  This not just because of the dependency and deaths they cause but because pharmacies which dispense these disastrous drugs can get physically raided by gangs or desperate addicts, and the place wrecked if the pharmacy is known to stock them. (I hasten to say that this could be just a local decision, not necessarily countrywide)

The family reputed to profit most from opioids, and which is famously generous in giving to the arts, is, as far as I know, still out and about and unrepentant. Of course, their profitable market is now being reduced by the sales of fentanyl.